Baby's 1st Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

We have had a wonderful Christmas so far and are enjoying every moment of this special day with Anna Kate. We have been spending a few days with Luke's family and they are having lots of fun playing with Anna Kate! We sure miss all of the Burgin side of the family, but there have been lots of phone calls and Skype video chats!

Last night we had a very nice time going to Luke's home church's Christmas Eve candlelight service. Anna Kate really wanted to hold a candle...maybe next year...or the next! Here are a couple of family pictures taken after the service.

When we got home we opened the traditional Burgin family Christmas eve present: new jammies! Then first thing in the morning when Anna Kate woke up (at 6:15...) she got to dig into her stocking. Here are a couple of stocking pictures.

Before we opened any of our other gifts growing up, we would first open the most important gift of all. Each year my mom always wrapped up the baby Jesus from the nativity scene and the youngest member of the family would get to open it to symbolize that Jesus is the greatest gift of all. Here is Anna Kate opening up the baby Jesus gift.

Only after opening that gift and reading the Christmas story from Luke 2 do we get to open our other gifts. Anna Kate definitely started to get the hang of ripping wrapping paper! Here she is with a few of her gifts: a fuzzy lamb that sings “Jesus Loves Me”, a ride-on zebra, and some wooden puzzles!

Anna Kate also received another special gift: authentic Texan cowgirl boots!

And here she is in her Christmas Day outfit. The "Noel" top was made by my talented friend Christy, and the skirt is my little sewing experiment!

We hope you all have a wonderful day celebrating the birth of our Savior!

Update on our little patient

Well after a very long 36 hours, Anna Kate is finally doing much better. When I blogged last night, she was sleeping really well, but that didn't last very long. She actually had a really rough night last night and we ended up at the ER from 2am to 4am with another really high fever that we couldn't get down. They did get her fever down and sent us home for a few hours before we were due back at the doctor's office. When we got to the doctor's office, she again had a really high fever and an elevated white blood cell count. They gave her another shot of antibiotic and a strict tylenol/motrin regimen to keep the fever down and scheduled us another appointment tomorrow morning. After we got home she took a great nap and woke up a brand new baby. She really has been feeling MUCH better this afternoon/evening and her temperature is staying down much closer to normal. In fact, she was feeling so much better this afternoon, I thought I would attempt to get some Christmas pictures of her. Bad idea...she apparently had saved up all of her energy the past two days and needed to get it all out and thus, refused to sit still. Here are my feeble attempts:

"Ok, so you want me to sit in front of this Christmas tree and NOT touch the ornaments?"

"Ha! Got one!"

"You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread baby!"

Ok, back to the update. So, Anna Kate is feeling much better and we head back to the doctor in the morning for (hopefully) the last time. Until her next well visit, that is! Oh, and we did get the results from the blood work...everything came back good!

What a day!

Poor Anna Kate is EXHAUSTED...she is totally zonked out in her crib and after reading this post, you will understand why!

Anna Kate had quite a rough night last night...waking up at least 5-6 times and fussing for long periods of time, even when I tried to rock and snuggle her. Now, I'm not going to lie and say that she has always been a fantastic sleeper, but last night was WAY worse than usual. This morning when we woke up for good, I thought she felt a little warm, so we took her temperature: 99.9. A little high, but not too concerning. I gave her some tylenol and we went about our morning. I put her down for her morning nap and she slept for 2 1/2 hours (an hour longer than usual) and when she woke up, she was really warm, but she was shaking/shivering. I called the doctor and they said to go ahead and bring her in. After weighing her (21 lbs. 8 oz. for anyone who is interested!), they took her temperature: 102.9. At this, I was obviously pretty alarmed (as was the nurse). They ordered a finger prick right away and her white blood count came back really high. So off they sent us to the hospital to get blood drawn. Now, in case you didn't know, drawing a 10-month-old's blood is NOT an easy task! Poor baby had to get both arms stuck before they finally found a vein. Then we had to go BACK to the doctor to get another shot, this time an antibiotic in the leg. Our doctor has a couple ideas about what it might be (nothing extremely serious), but we have to go back in the morning when they will have the lab results.

Here's a picture of our little trooper! Aren't those the saddest blue eyes you've ever seen? (Notice that BOTH arms have bandages from where they stuck her...she already pulled off the bandaids on her leg and on her finger)


Don't worry...I did get her to smile for the camera after she had a bath and got in her Santa jammies. I think she was excited to get in her bed.

My little chatterbox!

Here's a video I took this morning of some of the words that Anna Kate says. Now, they may just be babbling to you, but this mommy thinks they're precious! Enjoy!

Bedhead!

This is what I found when I went to get Anna Kate up from her nap yesterday...

A very giggly girl...

With some very messy hair!

10 months old today!

Wow, Anna Kate! You are 10 months old today...double digits! We feel like you are growing up right before our very eyes. Every time I go get you out of your crib in the morning or after naps, I feel like you've grown just a little taller and look a little more like a toddler and less like my tiny little baby. As you grow physically, know that the love that your daddy and I have for you grows every day too! Here are some things you have been doing this month:

~ You are doing a great job pulling up and walking around the living room while holding on to the coffee table or the couches. You still are wanting to hold on pretty tight, although I did see you let go for a few seconds a couple days ago...you promptly sat right down once you realized you weren't holding on to anything!
~ You are starting to really understand some of the things that we say to you and can even follow a few simple instructions like, "Put the block in the box," or, "Go open your drawer" (your special drawer in the kitchen).
~Speaking of kitchens, you have a new kitchen set given to you by some good friends and you absolutely love it! You love to open and close the refrigerator and the cabinets, and you love to play with the dishes and play food. You're not really quite tall enough to see much of the sink or the stove, but you sure try!
~ You have started to actually participate at baby storytime at the library every week. You wave hello and goodbye at the right time during the "Hello" song and the "Goodbye" song and you clap at all the right times during the rhymes that we do!
~ You LOVE playing "Pat-a-Cake"! Your favorite part is when you get to "roll" it. You roll your arms like the football sign for false start (or is it offsides?), except it's backwards!
~ You still wave hello and goodbye to everything and everyone that we pass by. Lately, every time we walk into the living room, you wave hi to the Christmas tree!
~ You are starting to communicate better with us at the table. You are beginning to learn the sign for "all done" (waving with both hands), although we're not sure if you're really doing it because you're all done, or if you're doing it because you just like to wave, and doing it with BOTH hands is TWICE as fun!
~You still love to go to the park and swing, although lately you have been wanting to do a little more than that. You love watching the big kids run and play on the playground, so I thought I would let you do a little exploring. You are having a great time climbing on the steps and going down the slide (with just a little help from mom and dad).
~You love to talk on the phone with your daddy and you love to play phone with just about any object! It is so cute the way you hold things up to your ear like a phone!
~ You now have 6 teeth! You have all four across the top and two on the bottom. You got them all out of order, but now it looks normal again!
~ We are starting to see a little bit of a strong-willed personality coming out in you! There are two items that for some reason you have grown very attached to and when we take them away, you would think your world had just ended: your purple sippy cup and your toothbrush!
~ You are still a very sweet little girl and love to give us hugs and kisses!

Anna Kate, your daddy and I love you more than words can say and we treasure each day we get to spend with you. You have blessed our lives in more ways that we thought possible!

And here are your pictures!

1 month old

Two months old

3 months old

Four months old

Five months old

Six months old

Seven months old

Eight months old

Nine months old

Ten months old!

The Christmas Spirit

Anna Kate occasionally has very sweet moments when she is very giving and wants to share everything. Lately it's been her paci. Now, you have to understand how much this child loves her paci. We do have a rule that she is only allowed to have it when she's sleeping or when she's snuggling (or in the church nursery!). But lately she has been wanting to share her paci with her mommy and daddy. I guess she thinks that if she loves it so much, we must love it too! Here's a video for you to see! (Sorry if you think it's gross...it's just a little baby slobber!)

The Perfect Christmas Tree!

We really wanted to cut down our own Christmas tree this year and thought Anna Kate might really enjoy the experience, so after a little online research, I found Pa Pa John's Christmas Tree Farm about 20 miles from us. So we loaded up Anna Kate, a tarp, and some rope, and headed out there!


Driving out there we really had to go through the boonies, and there were multiple times when Luke doubted that there actually was a Christmas Tree Farm (though I had done my research!), but we found it right where I said it was! Anyway, the owners were so nice and we had lots of fun walking through the rows of trees picking the perfect one. We felt a little bit like Goldilocks and the three bears...

This one is too big...


This one is too small...



But this one is just right!

You may still think that this one is too big, and in fact it is 10-11 foot Leyland Cypress, but we have some pretty tall ceilings and decided to go for it!

So Daddy got out his saw and went to work!


Anna Kate thought he needed a little help...


We may just have to make Pa Pa John's Christmas Tree Farm an annual family tradition!

It's that time of the year!

Time to send out Christmas cards! I am super excited this year because we'll be doing family Christmas cards for the first time! I know that you can do Christmas photo cards before you have kids, but we just never got around to it. Now that we have Anna Kate, though, I decided that I really wanted to do it this year. And thanks to Shutterfly, we are getting them for free! They have a promotion for bloggers going on right now where if you blog about their Christmas cards to help them get the word out, they'll give you 50 free photo cards. We have used Shutterfly before on numerous occasions to get our digital pictures printed and they have always done a great job. In addition to just getting prints of your photos, you can have lots of different gifts made - like calendars or coffee mugs, for instance! We have also gotten some flip books made for our parents of lots of Anna Kate pictures. My mom can keep it in her purse and have it ready whenever anyone asks about her grandkids!

Anyway, back to the Christmas cards, Shutterfly has TONS to choose from (805 different ones to be exact), so there's something for everyone. They have all different designs, colors, number of photos you can upload, etc. And, something I really like, is that they have a good number of religious options that talk about Christ's birth and that he is the true reason for celebration. It's definitely going to be hard to pick which one we will use this year! So what are you waiting for? Go check them out here: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-photo-cards

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wow! I have so many pictures and so much to blog about today because we had an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving week with two of my siblings and their families! My brother Stephen and his wife Rachael and their little Leah came from FL, and my sister Sarah and her husband Dustin along with Wesley and Cooper came from DC for the week. So we had 6 adults and 4 babies 2 and under all under one roof! We had so much fun watching all the babies play together, eating a great Thanksgiving dinner, watching football, doing some Christmas shopping, and just spending time together. Here are some of the MANY pictures we took of the occasion!

The kids loved going to the park together and we caught this classic picture of them on a park bench. Wesley is being so sweet holding Leah's hand whereas Cooper on the other hand is trying to steal Anna Kate's hairbow!



Here's another sweet one of Wesley and Leah playing together.


For Anna Kate's first Thanksgiving she wore her adorable turkey onesie and hairbow made by my friend Christy. I realized a few days before Thanksgiving that she didn't have anything to wear with it though, so I thought I would try my hand at sewing (without a machine, mind you!). It took me a while, but ended up with a decent looking skirt, I think!




Here's Luke being a good host and carving our lovely turkey!


Sarah and Rachael and I all put our efforts together and made all of our family's traditional Thanksgiving side dishes and desserts. Here's a picture of all of our hard work!


And here's Anna Kate ready to dig in to her first Thanksgiving feast!


Somewhere in the midst of all of the Thanksgiving excitement, Wesley got a hold of my camera and decided to hone his photography skills. Here are some of his best efforts:

A self-portrait...


And, his own toes...


Every morning we let the babies lounge around in their jammies for a while because they were just so darn cute!


Saturday, of course, was game day for the Seminoles v. the Gators (aka my sister's school v. my brother's school) and then also the Clemson tigers. Here are the kids ready to cheer on their favorite teams!


And just to get you in the mood for the next big holiday, we took a picture of the whole group of us in front of this lovely Christmas tree!


We sure missed Mom, Dad, and Andy, but we had a wonderful time with you all and hope you'll come again soon!

A couple fun videos

Here are a couple videos so that you can see what Anna Kate has been up to the past few days. She has two new favorite things to do: play telephone and "give loves". Here is a video of each...enjoy!

Visit with friends!

We had a great time this weekend visiting with some friends that we don't get to see too often! When I was in college I had to do lots of observations and practicums at various schools for my education courses. One of my placements was at a preschool where I met a little girl named Grace. I ended up teaching her violin, getting to know her family, and babysitting her and her little brother David on multiple occasions. When Luke and I got married, we asked them to be the flower girl and ring bearer in our wedding. We don't get to see them as often as we'd like now, but every chance we get, we always stop by to spend time with them. It has been so fun to see them interact now with Anna Kate. They sure love playing with her! Here are a couple of pictures that we took this weekend. I can't believe how grown up Grace and David are now!